Wanted: Backers of Ergenekon

The 13 included retired Maj. Gen. Veli Küçük and retired Col. Fikri Karadağ. The Ergenekon group had been the top story of all of Turkey's newspapers last week after it was uncovered as the organization apparently has strong ties to the deep state -- a phrase used to describe a phenomenon in which illegal groups in the security forces and state bureaucracy take the law into their own hands to serve their own political ends. Küçük is the first of his rank to be arrested by a civilian court. There are many faces currently in the bureaucracy and the military behind the faces in Ergenekon, and they should be identified, demanded many analysts and newspapers over the weekend.

The court decision followed the arrests of dozens of people last week in a police investigation into an ultra-nationalist group known as Ergenekon. The investigation has shown that the group had been planning to kill Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk and Todays's Zaman columnist Fehmi Koru as well as several Kurdish politicians. The nine people in custody under suspicion of membership in the Ergenekon organization -- part of a shadowy network with apparent inside links to the military, bureaucracy and some other state agencies thought to be responsible for assassinations of certain public figures, including Armenian journalist Hrant Dink -- were on Saturday taken to the İstanbul courthouse located in Beşiktaş. Officials have declined to comment on the case, which began last summer with the seizure of explosives and weapons at a house in the Ümraniye district of İstanbul.

The suspects arrested by the court on Saturday included Küçük, a retired general who is also the alleged founder of a secret intelligence unit in the gendarmerie, the existence of which is denied by officials; controversial ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz, who filed countless suits against Turkish writers and intellectuals who were at odds with Turkey's official policies; Fikret Karadağ, a retired army colonel who also heads the Association for the Union of Patriotic Forces (VKGB); Sevgi Erenerol, the press spokesperson for a group called the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate; Sami Hoştan, a key figure in the Susurluk investigation; Hüseyin Görüm; Hüseyin Gazi Oğuz; and Oğuz Alparsalan Abdülkadir. The arrested are facing charges of inciting people to armed revolt against the government.

The Susurluk investigation was launched in 1996 after a car crash near the small town of Susurluk that uncovered links between a police chief, a convicted fugitive, who was an ultranationalist, and a deputy. At the time hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens across the nation had protested, turning their lights out for a moment at 9 p.m. and calling on authorities to put an end to the shady insider gangs known as the "deep state."

Güler Kömürcü, a columnist for the Akşam daily who was taken into custody in the operation last week, was released Saturday by the court, but she remains banned from traveling abroad.

The suspects were taken out of the courthouse on Saturday under tight security. Photojournalists were not allowed to take any pictures.

Meanwhile, Hüseyin Görüm, one of the suspects, yelled out, “Kuvayı Milliye 1919 won!” The phrase is a reference to the right-wing Kuvayı Milliye (National Forces) movement that started in 1919 to purge Turkey of invading Western powers and resulted in the establishment of the Republic of Turkey.

Two more detained

Retired Maj. Zekeriya Öztürk, Kahraman Şahin, Erol Ölmez, Erkut Ersoy and Muhammet Yüce were also arrested.

Twelve people, including the lawyer of a Dink murder suspect, and Ali Yasak, also known as Drej Ali, another figure in the Susurluk investigation, were released after their initial interrogation.

The investigation has so far revealed that the group was preparing a series of bomb attacks aimed at fomenting chaos ahead of a coup in 2009 against Turkey’s center-right government, whose European Union-linked reforms are opposed by ultra-nationalists.

The Ergenekon group may have been behind the murder last January of Dink, a prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist, outside his office in Istanbul, newspapers have quoted police sources as saying.

Police have been observing Ergenekon -- the name of an epic story in nationalist mythology explaining how the Turks came into being -- for several years and have compiled a 7,000-page dossier on the group and its activities, newspapers say.

Gang meetings in church

The Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate, the Taraf daily wrote on Sunday, was the meeting place of the group. The patriarchate’s spokesperson, Sevgi Erenerol, hosted the gang’s meetings in the organization’s “church.” The daily noted that the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate was founded in 1924 to break the influence of the Fener Greek Patriarchate. Although it has no followers, it has become an important part of the “deep state,” as it was intended.

“As a church, we have regular meetings with the National Security Agency (MİT),” said Selçuk Erenerol, the third patriarch who is also the father of Sevgi Erenerol. The group owns two other churches, but none of them has a congregation.

Many of those arrested on Saturday, including Küçük, Kerinçsiz and Karadağ, had regular meetings at the church and gave their orders from there.

Some of the gang members are members of the Church of Scientology, some newspapers reported.

Links with the PKK

Meanwhile the Hürriyet daily on Sunday wrote that the group was planning to use two members of the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), known as the “deep” extension of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in a bombing. Maps of the plot showed that the group was planning to blow up a bridge along a highway where the air force and the navy headquarters are located.

The group also had plans to assassinate Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, sources speaking to Hürriyet claimed.

Who is behind Ergenekon?

The name of Küçük first appeared on Nov. 3, 1996, wrote Radikal columnist Murat Yetkin on Sunday. “However, neither that date nor Veli Küçük marks the start of the organizations of paramilitary militia.” He said if the allegations that Ergenekon was a group trying to create chaos through attacks to enable coup planners inside the military to overthrow the government, then it is necessary to reach the individuals at the “bottom of the iceberg.”

Yeni Şafak columnist Ali Bayramoğlu, known for his keen knowledge of Turkey’s political history, on Friday wrote: “One looking for Ergenekon need not go too far. This is the story of Ergenekon -- the Turkish Gladio -- from the assassination of [journalist] Abdi İpekçi [in 1979] to ‘the massacre of March 16’ [in 1978, when seven students at an İstanbul university were killed in a bomb attack], then peaking in Susurluk and possibly involved in the Council of State shooting.”

A senior judge was shot dead in an attack at the Council of State in 2006. The attacker was found to have links to shady networks similar to the Ergenekon gang.

Gladio was an Italian organization founded by NATO in the post World War I period to perform illegal, behind-the-scenes operations to counter the Soviet threat. Similar organizations were founded in many countries in the ‘50s. Many ended up doing the “dirty work” of their own secret services.